With considerable assistance from then-California attorney general Stanley Mosk, Sifford in 1961 became the first Black golfer to earn membership in the PGA of America — an organization whose constitutional bylaws allowed only golfers “of the Caucasian race” from 1934 to 1961.
For more than a decade, Sifford and other Black golfers in the 1940s and 1950s fought to become PGA members, dealing with bigotry, racism, death threats and countless humiliations. Spectators heckled Sifford during his backswing, kicked his ball into the woods and, in one appalling account recounted in his autobiography, “Just Let Me Play,” left human excrement in the cup to await Sifford’s foursome during a qualifying event.
The PGA strenuously impeded the Black golfers’ efforts, prompting Los Angeles Times columnist Jim Murray to refer to the organization as the “recreational arm of the Ku Klux Klan.” Those efforts, which included a 1948 lawsuit, went nowhere until Mosk, who met Sifford by chance at a Los Angeles country club in 1959, threatened to sue the PGA and prevent the organization from holding tournaments in California.
While Sifford’s cause was championed by such notables as Walter Winchell, Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis, there was no public support from the White players on the tour. The prevailing attitude was best expressed by a PGA lawyer, who when asked to defend the organization’s codified racism, responded, “Why do colored people want to go where they’re not welcome?”
The PGA’s intransigence was “utterly terrible,’’ said Sandy Cross, who has worked for the PGA for 28 years and helped launch the organization’s diversity program a decade ago.
“I would do anything I could to undo that,’’ she said while speaking on the 60th anniversary of the first PGA victory by a Black golfer, Pete Brown at the 1964 Waco Turner Open. “It felt important to me to recognize that and own that on behalf of the PGA, own that injustice.”
Thanks to Mosk’s pressure and Sifford’s persistence, the PGA membership eliminated what Mosk called “this obnoxious restriction” in November 1961, a year after it had voted by a 4-1 margin to keep the clause in its constitution. Sifford, who won his first PGA tournament in 1967, was soon joined by Brown on the tour.
But while the removal of the four words from the PGA constitution paved the way for Sifford to become a full-time member, it did not result in an attitudinal sea change on the tour. Sifford still was denied entry into tournaments, especially in the South. The 1962 Houston Open, which was played on a public course, did not let him compete. He did compete in a tournament in Florida in 1963 but was not allowed in the clubhouse or the restaurant. In 1964, he was told by a PGA official not to enter the New Orleans Open because the organization could not guarantee his safety.
Most of the Black golfers at that time played on the United Golfers Association Tour, which sponsored events on poorly conditioned courses and offered small purses. It did stage an annual National Open, which Sifford won six times, including five in a row from 1952 to 1956. But the overwhelming majority of UGA golfers simply were not PGA ready. Sifford was. Brown was. Later, golfers such as Lee Elder, Calvin Peete, Jim Thorpe and Jim Dent would enjoy success on the tour.
Tiger Woods’s arrival similarly did not open the floodgates for Black golfers. The number of Black professionals on the PGA Tour today can be counted on one hand. Woods and qualifier Willie Mack III are the only Black players in the 150-man field in this year’s U.S. Open. That could be construed as progress in that it is two more than participated in the 2023 U.S. Open.
Woods and Sifford became close despite a half-century difference in their ages. Woods called Sifford “the grandpa I never had” and named his son Charlie in Sifford’s honor. He has said he might never have played golf had Sifford not paved the way.
Sifford lived long enough to see Woods become the dominant player of the 21st century. In 2004, he became the first Black player inducted to the World Golf Hall of Fame. He died in 2015, but in Curry the Hall of Fame chose a deserving recipient of the award for whom it is named.
Peter May is the author of the recently released “Changing the Course: How Charlie Sifford and Stanley Mosk Integrated the PGA.”